cave swallows, cows, lots of very strange farm animals
in Texas (many different types of quadrapeds with wild horns, we suspect
bad genetic stuff is going on there...)

Town and Country RV Park
Roswell, NM

Pismo Sands RV Campground
Oceano, CA

Daily Narrative
The day began long before dawn in west Texas. With temperatures promising
to hit over 100 degrees by noon, and the bus lacking the modern convenience
of a radiator to cope with this, we were on the move by 5:30am. As
the sun rose, we found that we had climbed up onto a plateau in the darkness
the night before and were dropping back off of it this morning. It
was actually very pretty to look at, despite what we have said about Texas.
Also of considerable note to us was a near total lack of humidity.
As we coasted down off of the plateau toward Fort Stockton, the temperature
continued to rise and we couldn't help but notice this could be pretty
scary country for the bus to take a halt in. But the bus performed
like a trooper when the heat was on (pun intended), and by noon we were
closing in on New Mexico and Carlsbad Caverns. Even with getting
out of bed at 5:00, we were about two hours late trying to stay ahead of
the heat and the temperature was nearly 105 degrees by the time we hit
the Caverns around 1:00pm. Sad for the bus and unpleasant for it's
passengers. We parked at the visitor's center, ate a little, and
bought entry into New Mexico's own little piece of Alaska summertime.
At roughly 60 degrees year round, the "weather" in the caverns had us smiling
for hours. There was also some pretty awesome geology going on under
this patch of New Mexico desert. The caverns were about a three hour
hike and we opted for the audio tour, sort of a walkman-like experience
with different prerecorded pieces of information being prompted by transceivers
throughout the caves. We give Carlsbad Caverns two thumbs up.
We resurfaced around 4:30 to air that had not cooled a bit and gently urged
the bus on to Artesia, where all three of us enjoyed a car wash, before
driving on to Roswell, through a much appreciated thunderstorm, for the
evening.

Daily Pictures

Another early morning. This time in Kerrville, Texas

Sunrise in west Texas

We dropped back down off of what we believe was the Edwards
Plateau...

...to the temporarily green pastureland of the desert below

Green pasture pretty quickly gave way to sagebrush and
desert

And these odd trees

A couple of cows found to first standing water we have seen
all day, a little east of the Carlsbad Caverns

At first it was "Ooh, look cactus!", but the novelty wore off
over the hours

Adobe pueblos built by the CCC in the 1940's for Carlsbad employees
and operations

The Cavern's entrance

Can you feel the temperature dropping? We can!

Just inside, looking out

We could bore you with the scientific details about these, but
we'd have to remember them, so we'll just stick to simple descriptors

Pretty

Tall

Complex

Our journey's first subterranean gift shop

The best car wash we've collectively ever had turned up a sign
we thought got to the point. We can see a use for teachers

Settling in Roswell for the evening, we had an uneasy feeling
we were being watched...